Tactics of repression: How Iran is trying to stop Mahsa Amini protests
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Tactics of repression: How Iran is trying to stop Mahsa Amini protests
Washington Post – Oct 5th 2022
The ongoing protests began in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who fell into a coma after being detained by the country’s hated “morality police.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed Monday that the unrest had been instigated by foreign powers and blamed protesters for the violence: “The ones who attack the police are leaving Iranian citizens defenseless against thugs, robbers and extortionists,” he said.
Khamenei gave his full backing to the security forces, signaling a further wave of repression could be coming.
To understand the extent of the government’s crackdown against protesters, The Washington Post analyzed hundreds of videos and photographs of protests, spoke to human rights activists, interviewed protesters and reviewed data collected by internet monitoring groups. The Post geolocated videos of protests in at least 22 cities — from the Kurdistan region, where the protests began, to Bandar Abbas, a port city on the Persian Gulf, to Rasht on the Caspian coast.
The investigation focused on three key tactics used by the government to crush the protests — the apparent use of live ammunition by security forces, targeted arrests and the throttling of internet service.
The Post interviewed protesters in Marivan, Balo and Tehran, who corroborated the findings. All spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by security forces.
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